I do not yet know what it feels like to bury my mother or father, but I would not attempt to fathom what it feels like to bury your child…

I attended a funeral yesterday.

It was a funeral for a 22 year old man.

I cannot describe for you the feeling of watching a father looking into the casket of his son.

Godspeed Brian.

This is an older essay I wrote that received some praise so I wanted to republish it here in a more fitting home. It could use some clean up and it probably would have been a little different if written today, but I left it unchanged.

So, I bought a new home defense shotgun the other day and in the course of getting to know the gun shop owner, I showed him a rifle given to me by my grandfather, who was a Navy pilot in WWII. My grandfather was kind of gun nut and I always appreciated that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect his rights and ultimately mine, including that of owning a firearm.

That of course got me thinking about him and my other grandfather, who was an aircraft mechanic in WWII, and I recalled a day when I was visiting the former mechanic grandfather at his retirement home.

His room was a shared room, and he was paired up with another WWII vet, Mr. French. My grandfather wasn’t really too coherent at this point in his life, so I had more of a conversation going with Mr. French, who asked me essentially, “What do we need to do to get America back on track?”

At the time, I took the question at face value and offered a few thoughts, but it was a tough question to respond to, given its complexity and the history of the man who asked it.

Coming full circle, I was sitting out on my porch last night, racking some rounds through my new gun, and I had a deeper, sadder thought about that question and the man who asked it. I realized that here was a man who was willing to give his life for America, looking back at his life and looking at America as it now existed, and questioning what it was all for. I realized that for all the question’s simplicity, just how tragic it really was.

I don’t think Mr. French is around anymore. Neither are my grandfathers. But I hope that never again will a veteran have to look around at the country they were willing to die for and wonder if it would have been worth it.

September 11th galvanized us as a nation. We put American flag stickers on our cars, waved to our neighbors, and let people in front of us while we stood in line. Our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters had been taken from us and we stared bewildered because we didn’t know why.

Following the attack, it didn’t matter what color your skin was or your annual salary, if you were American, you were one of “us”, and in a time of great fear and grief, being one of “us” was part of what you needed to move on.

Now look at us. Torn to pieces, labeled by color, status, religion, politics, occupation. Arguing and fighting, yelling at each other over what? Who has more stuff? Who was born with the wrong skin color?

Open your eyes and look at the people who are fomenting this hatred, fabricating it out of thin air. They are the enemy, not your neighbor, not that guy on tv with more cars than you.

On this day, of all days, lower your fists, calm your voice, look at what you’ve become, what we have become. Then look at who has done this to us. It’s time to show the exit door to those who divide us. It’s time to become “us” again, and forever.

United We Stand

We have arrived at a moment in history where we must make a choice. Will we be free or will we be subjects to the will of those who believe they know better. I choose to be free.

I understand how we have arrived here. Freedom – for all of its beauty and promise – freedom is frightening. Choosing to be free, to walk your own path, comes without any guarantees. Your path might end in happiness, but there is a risk, a risk that the path ends in misery. It is this uncertainty that tempts us to sacrifice freedom for protection from misery and the promise of happiness. That promise is a lie.

Imagine living subject to another’s will, every choice commanded to you; your job, your house, your food, prescribed to you by a faceless someone. Imagine what happens to your soul when you are not able to live your own life. Is that not misery? I say that our choice is abundantly clear. We can choose the path that offers an opportunity for happiness, or the path that without question leads to misery.

Freedom or slavery. Independence or servitude.

Today I declare myself a free and independent being, capable of rational thought and autonomous action. I denounce the empty promise of security in exchange for liberty.

I claim anything I am independently capable of as a right. I understand that there are consequences to my actions in exercise of those rights and I accept responsibility for those consequences, good or bad.

I do not claim as a right, anything requiring the labor of another. I do not have the right to demand anyone perform labor on my behalf. A right requiring one person to labor for the benefit of another is nothing short of slavery.

I am a descendant of John Gray, the longest surviving veteran of the Revolutionary War.
I am, in fact, a son of the Revolution. A warrior’s blood flows through my veins. A warrior for freedom. It is that blood that compels me to declare my independence, my right to be free, my right to pursue freedom for others.

I will not lie down in the face of tyranny. I will stare back into those empty eyes, and I will see the rot and the weakness, the sinister core hiding behind a veneer of goodwill. My words are weapons and I will not hesitate to use them in the fight for freedom.

On this day, July 4th, 2012, in the footsteps of giants who fought for a society based on individual liberty and sovereignty, I declare my independence.

Let’s roll.